Elon Musk is under mounting pressure to resign as Twitter CEO after launching – and losing – an online poll on whether he should quit the social media platform.
In a post on Sunday evening, Musk asked his 122m followers whether he should “step down as head of Twitter” and promised to “abide by the results” of the vote. When the poll closed on Monday, more than 17.5m users had given their verdicts, with 57.5% voting for Musk to go.
The Tesla tycoon is “normally a prolific user of the platform”, said The Guardian, but he remained silent until some users suggested the results had been skewed by fake accounts.
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“Interesting,” tweeted Musk. Replying to another user’s suggestion that paid subscribers to Twitter Blue should be “the only ones that can vote in policy-related polls”, Musk wrote: “Good point. Twitter will make that change.”
Since buying the platform for $44bn in October, his tenure as Twitter CEO has been “turbulent”, said Sky News. Major advertisers are now leaving the platform over concerns about its direction – “and its ability to pay interest on the $13bn debt Musk took on to buy it”, added the broadcaster.
Musk has faced widespread criticism following a series of controversial moves including firing about half of Twitter’s staff. His poll followed what The Telegraph described as a “banning spree” in which Musk temporarily booted several journalists off the platform and threatened to ban links to rival tech companies.
Musk has “obeyed Twitter polls in the past”, said the BBC, and is “fond” of quoting the Latin phrase “vox populi, vox dei”, meaning “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.
If Musk were to step down, there is “no clarity on who would succeed him”, said The Telegraph. There is speculation that Jared Kushner – who Musk was photographed with at the World Cup final in Qatar – could be a contender.
Former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and Bret Taylor, the former chair of Twitter’s board, have also been mooted. But many observers remain “sceptical” that Musk would “really leave”, said the paper.
